This demonstrates two things (1) that Saddam was not such a bad guy after all - indeed he was rather generous; and (2) that geo-political alliances can sour at the drop of a dollar.
Saddam Hussein donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Detroit church and received a key to the city more than two decades ago, soon after he became president of Iraq.
The events contrast sharply with the attack Saddam's regime is now facing from a U.S.-led coalition, reflecting his changed relationship with the United States since Washington helped Saddam covertly in his 1980-88 war with Iran.
Saddam's bond with Detroit started in 1979, when the Rev. Jacob Yasso of Chaldean Sacred Heart congratulated Saddam on his presidency.
In return, Yasso said, his church received $250,000.
"He was very kind person, very generous, very cooperative with the West. Lately, what's happened, I don't know," Yasso, 70, said Wednesday. "Money and power changed the person."
Sure - it makes them more arrogant and less compliant to US corporate demands.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.
Yasso said that at the time, Saddam made donations to Chaldean churches around the world.
"He's very kind to Christians," Yasso said.
Chaldeans are a Catholic group in predominantly Muslim Iraq. Among prominent Chaldeans is Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz.
A year later, Yasso traveled with about two dozen people to Baghdad as a guest of the Iraqi government, and they were invited to Saddam's palace. "We were received on the red carpet," Yasso said.
Yasso said he presented Saddam with the key to the city, courtesy of then-Mayor Coleman Young.
Then, Yasso said, he got a surprise. "
He said, `I heard there was a debt on your church. How much is it?"' Yasso said.
Saddam donated another $200,000.
In the 1980s, Iraq and the United States were allied in their mistrust of Iran, which held hundreds of Americans hostage under the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Yasso called Saddam an American puppet.
"The job the United States trusted to him is done; now he's no good," he said.
Another useful idiot bites the dust and another brick in the wall of back-stabbing imperial treachery by the US and the corporate interests they represent.
Meanwhile, ordinary Iraqis and Americans pay the ultimate price.
quote:
Dear Hollywood, Why are you so lame? Why don’t you have a single original idea left in your collective head? Why do you hate audiences? Why do you continue to crank out by-the-numbers animated films that hold ticket-buying families and animation fans in contempt while trying to sell them tie-in merchandise at the same time?
Why do “Madagascar” and “The Wild” and “Open Season” and “Flushed Away” all have the same plot? How many domesticated menageries of circle-of-life-defying zoo pals actually find themselves tossed into the wilderness on a regular basis, learning the true meaning of family and home in the process?
Why did you make me sit through “Barnyard,” a movie where a bull with a milk-heavy udder played a guitar and sang Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down?” And why was I expected to take that scene seriously for even one second? Why did that lactating bull’s pals have a rave in the barn, dancing to techno and getting fake-drunk on milk and honey? Was it his milk they were drinking? And why did my four-year-old and nine-year-old nieces willingly walk out of that movie with their mother, unconcerned with how it all ended?
that's a classic, tgr!
I hated Madagascar - the whole idea of a lion trying to force himself not to eat meat, and then settling for fish as if fish don't have souls!
What a mad and absurd thing to teach children!
The worst thing about it is that animated films are so enjoyable that they have a nasty way of getting under children's skins and making them almost obsessed with those overpriced useless merchandise they throw at you ad nauseum everywhere you go - point of purchase at the supermarket, EVERYWHERE!
ARRGGGH!